Only in Naples (16 page)

I
f Neapolitans are the world's experts at dramatizing the mundane, they are also experts at what they call
sdrammatizzare:
to dedramatize, to undramatize. The
s
at the beginning of a verb makes it the opposite, so
sdrammatizzare
is to suck the tragedy from something and spit it out with a great big smile.

Naples is a city whose history has been marked by occupations, invasions, poverty, and tragedy. Unemployment hovers around 13 percent. The
camorra
, the Neapolitan Mafia, holds business and industry hostage and causes endless violence. Soiled maxi pads and stinking diapers crown the mountains of trash that line the streets. (Naples has the highest garbage collection tax of any city in Italy. Garbage isn't collected, and the money ends up in the hands of the
camorra
.)

How to explain the cheerfulness of Neapolitans? It goes much deeper than great food, great weather, let's enjoy the
dolce vita
! The
dolce vita
is not so
dolce
when people live in poverty, the air reeks of refuse, and corruption and injustice are commonplace. The smiles and songs on the lips of Neapolitans can in large part be explained by the art of
sdrammatizzazione.
They manage to take the drama out of situations that are truly dramatic—when there is tragedy, or suffering, or, quite simply, when the stakes are high.

I had been accepted into the master's program in International Relations at SAIS Bologna, which meant that I would return to Washington for a summer of intensive economics courses. Although I would be coming back to Italy in the fall, I knew that it would be a different Italy. I would be a graduate student in the North. My “year abroad” was over, and this crazy, chaotic, colorful chapter of my life was coming to an end.

Gelato
or no
gelato,
I was miserable.

Raffaella organized a going-away party for me the night before my departure. She set out Coke and Orange Fanta and plastic cups. (It was a party for twenty-two-year-olds—if anyone felt like wine or beer they could ask for it, right?) She baked a
pasta al forno,
which she knew was my favorite: a pasta casserole chock-full of bacon, béchamel, and no fewer than four different kinds of cheese. Covered with breadcrumbs, it came out of the oven golden brown and crispy on top. Of course, she also prepared about six other dishes for the party, but it was the
pasta al forno
that I smelled when she opened the door for me that evening.

I told myself that I would hold it together. Enough with the tears! I had been crying most of the day. But when I looked in her eyes, I couldn't.

I started sobbing.
Drammatico,
no? Raffaella's reaction was anything but. It was the amazing, unexpected art of
sdrammatizzare.
Did she cry? Did she Oh-I-understand-honey? Did she even hug me? No, she slapped me across the face. Not so it hurt, just so I would come off it. I was so shocked that I did come off it. Her own eyes were glistening, but her voice was forceful and, yes, cheerful.
“Ué ué!”
(which is like “Hey you!”). “The
pasta al forno
is almost ready, come and see how crispy you want it on the outside….”

I was forced out of my sadness, slapped out of my own personal drama. I followed Raffaella into the kitchen to help (read: watch, dodge, and whimper).

Salvatore came in and said,
“Ciao, vita mia!”
He had given up calling me Pagnottella, Little Muffin, and was now using the Neapolitan expression “my life.” I mean, please! Couldn't he have chosen a term of endearment like
sweetie pie
or even
darling
? “My life” sent me back into my drama once again, and the tears started flowing. My tears started Salva crying too: no macho stiff-upper-lipping for him. We were hugging, he was repeating
“Vita mia!”
and we were pathetic. We were also physically in the way of the
pasta al forno
. Something had to be done.

Another slap would have been difficult for Raffaella, as she still had her oven mitts on. So she slapped us with her words.

“Ué ué! La vogliamo finì?”
Y'all want to come off it now? She was smiling. She was cheerful. She was a master in the art of
sdrammatizzazione.

As a parent, Salvatore has drawn on his mother's lessons. There are no sobbing
“vita mia”
moments when one of our children cries. Before I manage to Oh-honey them, before I arrive with my furrowed eyebrows and I-understand-your-pain-let-me-feel-it-with-you, he's there. He's there with his finger outstretched and a smile on his face. He's touching their tears. “Mamma Ketrin! Let's taste these tears to see if you put enough salt in the water when you were making this little one.” He always tastes them. Not for pretend—he really tastes them. And guess what? The amount of salt always happens to be just right.

W
hen I arrived back in the States in June of 1997, I missed Salvatore, I missed the Avallone family, and I missed Naples. On top of it all, I desperately missed Neapolitan coffee.

I should mention that in both suburban Maryland and downtown Naples, coffee is essential to my being, and staying, human. And the sounds that are linked to the experience of coffee consumption trigger in me a drug addict's vein-jumping response. In the United States, there is the squeaky Styrofoam sound of “to go.” There is Billie Holiday singing in a Starbucks, a background to the barista's (or Starbucksista's) efficient assembly-line voice calling out, “Venti chai” or “Skim soy latte” (isn't life complicated enough as it is? I wonder). There are people standing in line who are not talking.

In Italy, the sound of coffee in a bar is clinking porcelain. It is cacophony, racket, loud voices arguing and laughing over the
ssssshhhh
of the espresso machine. These sounds, a prelude to the hit of that syrupy black nectar that is called
caffè,
remind me that everything is possible. I can fight the good fight.

I think the fundamental difference between the experiences of coffee in the United States and coffee in Italy comes down to the concept of “to go.” In America, coffee is taken to go because there's a lot of liquid to be consumed. It accompanies you as you go about your morning. There is comfort in the feel of large quantities of lava-hot liquid under your fingers, of knowing that this coffee will be with you for hours. Your big hot cup of American coffee or latte or macchiato or whatever else Starbucks has decided to name it, will be held close, cuddled and nursed. Your very own grown-up sippy cup, thanks to that marvelous plastic mouthpiece (a
beccuccio
, or little beak, they would call it in Italian), which enables you to sip without spilling or scalding your mouth. Sipped and dripped. American coffee is sippy and drippy. It is like the saline bags that are linked to an intravenous drip: the level of fluid in your bloodstream never drops below a certain level.

Italian espresso, on the other hand, is a hit. A fast, intense bang to your veins. It is a one-gulp switch of the wrist that wakes and revs you up in an instant. For this reason, Italian coffee to go makes no sense. Or rather, it makes sense only when you can't make it to the bar and the uniformed barman brings it to your office on a tray, in a porcelain cup (you'll bring it back, you're trusted, they've got plenty of them). You can get your one-gulp hit somewhere other than the bar as long as it's close by and the whole endeavor is performed quickly.

Many Italians, particularly in Naples, ask me with a big smile whether I prefer American or Italian coffee. Their faces tell me they know the answer, they know the only possible answer. They are fishing for a great big national compliment. No one can say that Italians are not patriotic—I mean, really, who cares whether you're a superpower if your coffee is bad? Most Italians (and particularly Neapolitans) find coffee in America terrible. I have heard it called
brodaglia
, or bad broth, and
acqua sporca
, dirty water. Many find even the idea of it, particularly coffee poured from a pot (reheated!
Ahimè!
) disgusting.

With a revolted but curious look on her face, Benedetta picked my brain about American “dirty water”: “I've seen in movies and on TV those big cups that sit all day on American desks. What do you call them?
Moogs?
They can't really be filled with coffee, can they?”

“Mugs, and usually, yes, they are.”

“All that liquid is coffee?”

“Yes.”

“Doesn't it get cold?”

“Eventually, yes.”

“And Americans drink it anyway? When it's getting cold?”

“Yes.”

And then the crux of the matter. “You don't actually like that dirty water that they call coffee in America, do you?”

“I do.”

Truthfully, I don't mind the taste of a Venti, I enjoy the relaxing experience of Billie Holiday singing in a Starbucks. People waiting in a line. A straight line, in which you know your position. It's not that no order exists in Naples when it comes to ordering a coffee, it's just that the “line” is a very amorphous formation. To an American, it may seem that people are crowded around the cash register trying to elbow each other to be first. Some people are, and do, but often people do know their place in Italian “lines”—they are simply not physically standing one in front of another. They remember who has entered before and after them: the order is an unspoken reality. They feel no need to re-create this order physically, because, after all, we all know that the lady with the white hair is after the young guy with the leather jacket and before the man with the beard, right?

So the person behind the cash register, seeing three or more people standing shoulder to shoulder, asks,
“Chi c'era?”
—Who's next? I, not remembering who came in when, sure only that I've been in that spot an awfully long time and am in dire need of caffeine, do not say, as I should,
“Io!”
(Me!) and order. I look at the people on either side of me, and trust. If no one is in too much of a rush, one of them will point graciously at me and say,
“La signorina
.
”
Ahhh, it's nice when that happens. Authorized, I order my hit. What stress.

So when I went to Starbucks that first summer home, it was so relaxing that I sometimes felt like maybe I didn't even
need
a hit. But I would often go with a friend, to talk over coffee. To talk while drinking. Yes, we Americans multitask! And talking while drinking means that you need liquid, large quantities of it. So I would order a Venti, a drip drip drip sip sip sip into veins that were used to the sudden rush of the godly nectar that was my espresso. The Venti tasted good, though. As long as I didn't think of it as
caffè
.